what eye cannot see and heart cannot contain, the boundless love of Him Who is Infinite, and act, day by day, as those whose endless home, by our Redeemer's mercy, is around, or beneath, the Throne of God.

"Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find so doing!" For He saith: "Where I am, there shall My servant be." Where, Lord? In My Joy, the Joy of thine own Lord, the Joy, after thy measure, of the Man Christ Jesus, Whose Joy is in the Ever-Blessed Trinity, in perfect knowledge, and blissful glory, and unvarying peace, and fulness of the soul, and transporting love, and participation of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen.

SERMON XIV.

THE TEACHING OF GOD WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

WHIT-SUNDAY.

PSALM XXV. 15.

"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will shew them His covenant."

GOD reveals Himself in two ways to man, within and without. Even when man had fallen from Him, and God left him for a time to walk in his own ways, He still, St. Paul says, "left not Himself without a witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from Heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." By His Providence, in the order and variety of the seasons, "by the unspeakable beauty of the whole world, by the rich and ordered bounty of His unutterable Gifts," by His dispensations of chastisement or of love, He revealed Him

a

a De vocat omn. Gent. ii. 4. ap. S. Prosper.

self without, "gave to the heart of man the tables of an eternal law," and wrote His word" on the pages of the elements." "What," says a holy writer," "is this exceeding variety of forms and countless beauty in things created, but rays of the Godhead, shewing that He from Whom they are, indeed IS, yet not explaining what HE IS, so that thou seest what is from Him, not Himself."

But even on the heathen He wrote a more inward law which answered to that outward, and interpreted its voice, the law of conscience. "These," says St. Paul of the heathen, "shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." "To all mankind," says a heathen," "conscience is God." "Thinkest thou," saith another," "that he hath escaped whom his mind, conscious of his fearful deed, holds stricken?" Night and day, they bear their witness in their breast."

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Each of these voices of God is made more distinct, as man is brought nearer to God. Without, together with God's voice in nature whereby He still speaks, when we forget His voice of Grace, He hath given us "the writings of the law, the oracles of Prophets, the melody of the Psalms, the instruction of Pro

b S. Bern. in Cant. Serm. 31.

c Menander. I am not certain whether this be the same verse as is quoted from the Adelphi in S. Justin de Monarchia, p. 41. ed. Bened. "The mind is to the good ever God, as the wisest deem." S. Justin also quotes from the Tibic. "For all things For the mind is the God which will

are a temple to right reason. speak."

a Juven. 13. 192.

verbs, the experience of Histories," the words of the Son made Flesh by Himself or by His Apostles. Within, together with the voice of conscience, He speaks too by the Spirit.

These two voices must ever be heard together. The outward voice falls dead and cold when the inward is not awakened; the inward is not given, to take the place of the outward; and all who would so use it, have mistaken suggestions of their own mind or of the evil one, for the still Voice of God. God's outward Voice reveals, His inward applies what It has revealed. His outward Voice declares what we are to believe and do; His inward Voice opens our ears and our heart, that we may believe and love and do it. Without His inward Voice, we should be like an instrument unattuned, which can give forth none but harsh and discordant sounds. Without the outward, we should be like the same instrument, attuned, yet none to play upon it.

The Jews heard our Lord with the outward ear and saw His miracles, and could not deny them, yet in vain. "Hearing, they heard, but understood not; seeing, they saw, but perceived not; for their heart was waxed gross, and their ears were dull of hearing, their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted and I should heal them."

God had opened the inward ear of Cornelius and of the Ethiopian eunuch, and He wrought a miracle that they should not lack his outward teaching, sending St. Peter and St. Philip to instruct them. He opened the jailor's heart by the terrors of the

earthquake, and gave him St. Paul to teach him whereby he and his house might be saved. Lydia's heart and the three or five thousand He opened at once through the ministry of His preacher and the inward teaching of the Spirit.

And so it is now. St. Augustine's heart God opened' at last by the voice of his conscience and by the word of the Apostle, " Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof;" St. Anthony's" He opened by the words of His Son, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and come and follow Me." Towards us too He often speaks with power through some words of Holy Scripture which we have often half heard and neglected, and He draws water out of the flinty rock. He prepares our hearts to fear Him, and so He speaks to them in mingled sounds of terror and of hope.

Yet not in man's first conversion only or chiefly does God thus speak. He is ever teaching us more and higher truth, as we are obedient to His earlier voice. The same Holy Scripture is at once "milk to babes, and strong meat to men whose minds are exercised." "As the manna suited every man's taste,' so the same Holy Scripture is to each, such as he himself is. It nourishes the child; it hath hidden depths for the soul whose "life is hid with Christ in God."

God speaketh ever to the heart, as He speaketh

Conf. L. 8. c. 12, § 29. p. 153, Oxf. Tr.

S. Ath. Vit. S. Anton. § 2. p. 796. ed. Ben.

h S. Matt. xix. 21.

i Wisdom. xvi. 20.